Essay

Pioneering Sisters Made Their Marks in Both History and in the Arts of Santa Fe and the Southwest

• Elizabeth Barr Bryant
• 7 hrs ago

In 1921, independence didn’t just float in on a breeze; it arrived in a cloud of dust behind an oversized Cadillac. When my great-grandaunts — artist Dorothy Newkirk Stewart and her sister Margretta Stewart Dietrich, president of the Nebraska Women’s Voters League — crossed the newly established New Mexico state line, they were part of a vanguard of remarkable women who saw the high desert not just as a picturesque retreat but also as a laboratory for a new kind of American life.

Margretta was educated at the progressive women’s college Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania, but her political mettle was forged in the fires of the Nebraska suffrage movement. She understood that winning the ballot in 1920 was only the threshold; the real challenge was getting women to vote.

In her address to Santa Fe’s electorate in 1922, she famously likened a woman’s role at the polls to household chores, emphasizing the importance of “cleaning up” politics. She had learned early in her career that legislation was the primary vehicle for lasting change.

In Santa Fe, she found a community of strong, educated, and independent-minded women who had left the comfort of their Victorian society to establish themselves in a social milieu where their voices mattered. Alongside such pioneers as Mary Austin, Katherine “Kate” Mueller Chapman, Elizabeth and Martha White, Alice Corbin Henderson, and Mary Cabot Wheelwright, Margretta helped transform the tea parties of Canyon Road into boardrooms.

While the industrial East had its skyscraper offices, Santa Fe had its adobe parlors. Over porcelain cups, these women gathered their funds and their forces to defeat injustices, such as the Bursum Bill in 1923, a piece of federal legislation designed to strip Pueblo peoples of their ancestral lands.

When the official chain of command remained deaf to their efforts, these women bypassed the bureaucrats entirely. They leveraged their social status and their pens to demand change directly from Washington, D.C. For these early feminists, “feminism” was less a theory and more a consistent series of actions.

Serving as president of the New Mexico Association on Indian Affairs from 1932 to 1953, Margretta became a fierce advocate for the welfare and preservation of Native traditions in New Mexico. When she learned that commodities weren’t being distributed on Navajo reservations and the people were starving, she privately funded a survey, hiring Maria Chabot to report on the ongoing misuse of funds and resources, creating a stir in Washington. Whether she was circulating petitions to protest the teaching of painting in “realistic” European techniques in the Santa Fe Indian School or giving stump speeches, Margretta was on the firing line.

details

Carving the Southwest: The Artistry of Dorothy Stewart, presented by the Historic Santa Fe Foundation

Opening reception 5-7 p.m. Friday, May 29; exhibit runs through August 17; Elizabeth Barr Bryant will lecture on Dorothy Stewart’s legacy at 3 p.m. Thursday, June 4

Eugene and Clare Thaw Research and Education Center at the Edwin Brooks House (adjacent to El Zaguán)

553 Canyon Road

$10 for lecture; registration required

historicsantafe.org/dorothy-stewart

While Margretta fought to secure the political framework of a free society, her younger sister Dorothy was busy illustrating what a life lived with that freedom actually looked like. Capturing the architectural and spiritual soul of “Old Santa Fe” through her woodblock prints, Dorothy proved that independence was in her very DNA.

To look at her woodblock prints, which debuted in 1928 at the Museum of New Mexico and return to the walls of El Zaguán for an exhibit opening Friday, May 29, is to see a woman in reflective conversation with the land and the people Margretta was fighting to protect. From the simplicity of wood carving to the mastery of a Franklin Press — a heavy, hand-powered hulk of a machine that required both strength, precision, and a lionshare of patience — Dorothy exercised her right to freedom of expression through her art, mechanical creations, and nomadic lifestyle.

Yet she cared deeply for those she loved, giving her time, talents, and resources to the causes she believed in, often anonymously. Although she and her sister came to the Southwest as visitors, Dorothy never met a stranger.

Whether she was riding horseback through unexplored canyons or sitting behind the wheel of her 1931 Austin coupe (a vehicle she famously transformed into a pioneer wagon for camping) or beside a reflecting pool, she was at home in the world. Dorothy was a testament to the fact that a woman could own her creative labor, master industrial machinery, and define her own life on her own terms. In fact, her legacy is literally carved into the hills above the city in the Dorothy Stewart Trail (part of the southern portion of the Dale Ball Trail system).

The struggle for autonomy — the right to speak, to vote, and to own one’s work — is as important today as it was then. Although my great-grand aunts had many advantages, they chose to make a difference in the world, rather than sitting on the sidelines accepting the status quo.

As we navigate a landscape where women’s rights feel once again under scrutiny, the Stewart sisters are an inspiration to me. They remind me to be courageous, be willing to try new things, and when life calls you forward, say “yes.”

That fortitude is the impetus for this story. In honor of the 100th anniversary of these women’s arrival to Santa Fe, Dorothy’s woodblock prints are on display this summer at El Zaguán.

I hope visitors admiring these prints see more than “charming” historical images. I hope they see the grit of two women who refused to be small. We are all passengers in that 1921 Cadillac, and the destination of our rights is still something we have to navigate for ourselves — one mile, one vote, and one act of defiance at a time. ◀

Elizabeth Barr Bryant has been a professional actor, musician, and body worker for nearly three decades and lives in the mountains of North Carolina. Her first book, a biography, Dorothy Stewart: Santa Fe Artist and Printmaker, will be published March 2027 by McFarland and Company.